By thinking of things you could understand them.
from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
[Work] script
#!/bin/sh
base_name=$1
threshold=$2
echo "basename: ${base_name}"
echo "threshold: $threshold"
i=0
for f in ${base_name}*.tif
do
bf=${base_name}$(printf "%03d" $i)
echo ./corners $f $bf $threshold 2
./corners $f $bf $threshold 2
i=$((i+1))
done
[Work] script
rename the files and arrange them in numerical order
#!/bin/bash
i=0
for f in pc*.tif
do
nf=c$( printf "%03d" $i ).tif
mv $f $nf
i=$(($i+1))
done
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
[Life] Merely players
早上，欣赏一路的秋色
下午，体验失落的心灵
晚上，看《戏王之王》
一个人的一天，一个世界的四季
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. --Shakespeare
下午，体验失落的心灵
晚上，看《戏王之王》
一个人的一天，一个世界的四季
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. --Shakespeare
[Life] 创造的土壤
下午大老板开了个大会，勾勒了伟大的蓝图。
接着会议主席讲解这次所里组织的会议的注意事项。
接着是例行的组内会议， 在会议的开头，有人提出来，会议太多了。这是老板最不喜欢听的话。 老板开始为他的会议论辩解。 例举每一个会议都是必要的， 都是有效进行的。 我想每一个在座的，除了老板，没有一个人不会暗暗思忖会议太多太滥。 可谁在乎呢？谁会去辩驳呢？
开完会， 我找老板， 希望讨论一下正在进行的项目。我的开场白就是我并没有按照上个星期的讨论前进。我计划把去年的项目往前推进一步。我很兴奋得说着我的想法，描述已有的初步结果。 老板的脸越来越难看。 终于， 他开口了。否定，完完全全的否定。他认为我说的一切仅仅是一个很小的进步。他认为这仅仅够一篇很小会议的标准。这是一种极大的侮辱。他继续着他的批判，他认为当前应该进行一个伟大的革新的项目， 而不是做一个小小的进步。他认为我原本可以做出更大的贡献，一个标志性的贡献，一个可以让我骄傲的贡献。而我退却了，逃避了。
我说另一个苦衷是， 如果我做上个星期讨论的项目，我需要很多的硬件，很大的空间。他说，这不应该成为问题，美妙的想法可以先用理论验证，可以先模拟，然后用试验证明。我只能苦苦的在内心冷笑。 理想主义
我再一次强调我的想法的贡献是什么，我的声音很低很低，低到了让人觉得丢掉了所有的自信。这是因为我的心情跌倒了谷底。我的想象和情感再次回到了去年，进而想起了9月份的哪一个投稿。 我想老板也在类似的联想中，因为那打击对他同样的深刻。一种不愉快的沉默。
他再次强调，这样的想法是很小的，没有什么实际价值的，但如果我乐意，我可以做。这样，讨论结束，一个不开心的走开，一个情绪低落的走开。想起去年的那个时候，那是冒火的一次。如果在那个时刻，我低头了，我放弃了，那就没有那篇重要的文章，就没有了现在抵抗的所有资本。去年，我用了前年的资本，今年，我有了前年和去年的资本。纯粹的抵抗是纯粹的愚蠢。问题的关键是，不能放弃，不能停下，创造，在高压下创造。这是唯一的出路。
但我的心很痛， 在跌落。 一个个相关的场景浮现在眼前。 我的双眼在冒火：这不公平的待遇，这双重标准，这先入为主的偏见， 这不现实的好高骛远， 这只会给人打击的老板。何谓真正的导师？我需要真正的导师吗？
我的心已变得坚强， 坚强的心是不怕这样的打击的，不怕这样的压力的。一颗坚强的心， 加上一个富有想象力的脑袋，踏在坚实土地上的双脚， 和勤快的双手，会创造出奇迹的。伟大的奇迹并不意外，必有苦难的土壤。
这就是我的命运，一个叛逆者和创造者的命运。
这也许真实地解释了我为什么会喜欢James Joyce的小说。我为什么会因为读他的小说而彻夜不眠， 为什么我会泪流满面。心的抚慰。 我从中找到了我的力量，从中听到了思想的回音。 尽管是不同的时代，不同的语言，不同的国家，不同的文化，不同的经历，我的心为之而跳动。
因为叛逆，因为压迫，因为抗争，因为理想，因为孤独。因为心的痛苦， 心的痛苦，奇花异草的天然土壤。
写于 金色透明的秋
接着会议主席讲解这次所里组织的会议的注意事项。
接着是例行的组内会议， 在会议的开头，有人提出来，会议太多了。这是老板最不喜欢听的话。 老板开始为他的会议论辩解。 例举每一个会议都是必要的， 都是有效进行的。 我想每一个在座的，除了老板，没有一个人不会暗暗思忖会议太多太滥。 可谁在乎呢？谁会去辩驳呢？
开完会， 我找老板， 希望讨论一下正在进行的项目。我的开场白就是我并没有按照上个星期的讨论前进。我计划把去年的项目往前推进一步。我很兴奋得说着我的想法，描述已有的初步结果。 老板的脸越来越难看。 终于， 他开口了。否定，完完全全的否定。他认为我说的一切仅仅是一个很小的进步。他认为这仅仅够一篇很小会议的标准。这是一种极大的侮辱。他继续着他的批判，他认为当前应该进行一个伟大的革新的项目， 而不是做一个小小的进步。他认为我原本可以做出更大的贡献，一个标志性的贡献，一个可以让我骄傲的贡献。而我退却了，逃避了。
我说另一个苦衷是， 如果我做上个星期讨论的项目，我需要很多的硬件，很大的空间。他说，这不应该成为问题，美妙的想法可以先用理论验证，可以先模拟，然后用试验证明。我只能苦苦的在内心冷笑。 理想主义
我再一次强调我的想法的贡献是什么，我的声音很低很低，低到了让人觉得丢掉了所有的自信。这是因为我的心情跌倒了谷底。我的想象和情感再次回到了去年，进而想起了9月份的哪一个投稿。 我想老板也在类似的联想中，因为那打击对他同样的深刻。一种不愉快的沉默。
他再次强调，这样的想法是很小的，没有什么实际价值的，但如果我乐意，我可以做。这样，讨论结束，一个不开心的走开，一个情绪低落的走开。想起去年的那个时候，那是冒火的一次。如果在那个时刻，我低头了，我放弃了，那就没有那篇重要的文章，就没有了现在抵抗的所有资本。去年，我用了前年的资本，今年，我有了前年和去年的资本。纯粹的抵抗是纯粹的愚蠢。问题的关键是，不能放弃，不能停下，创造，在高压下创造。这是唯一的出路。
但我的心很痛， 在跌落。 一个个相关的场景浮现在眼前。 我的双眼在冒火：这不公平的待遇，这双重标准，这先入为主的偏见， 这不现实的好高骛远， 这只会给人打击的老板。何谓真正的导师？我需要真正的导师吗？
我的心已变得坚强， 坚强的心是不怕这样的打击的，不怕这样的压力的。一颗坚强的心， 加上一个富有想象力的脑袋，踏在坚实土地上的双脚， 和勤快的双手，会创造出奇迹的。伟大的奇迹并不意外，必有苦难的土壤。
这就是我的命运，一个叛逆者和创造者的命运。
这也许真实地解释了我为什么会喜欢James Joyce的小说。我为什么会因为读他的小说而彻夜不眠， 为什么我会泪流满面。心的抚慰。 我从中找到了我的力量，从中听到了思想的回音。 尽管是不同的时代，不同的语言，不同的国家，不同的文化，不同的经历，我的心为之而跳动。
因为叛逆，因为压迫，因为抗争，因为理想，因为孤独。因为心的痛苦， 心的痛苦，奇花异草的天然土壤。
写于 金色透明的秋
Monday, October 29, 2007
[Reading] The midnight reading
It is 4:41AM. I reach the end of the book. I has been carried away by James Joyce. The plain closeup touched my deep heart. The frail air soothes my soul. I recalled the past life when James wrote the beginning of a voyage of life.
A story, a plain story, tells the trails of the soul, about parents, masters, friends, priests, Gods, girls, boys and animals. It is about belief, ambition, obedience, disobedience, death, love, desire, hope, brevity, cowardliness, liberation, and loneliness.
A story, a plain story, tells the trails of the soul, about parents, masters, friends, priests, Gods, girls, boys and animals. It is about belief, ambition, obedience, disobedience, death, love, desire, hope, brevity, cowardliness, liberation, and loneliness.
[Reading] Excerpts
His words seemed to have struck some deep chord in his own nature. Had he spoken of himself, of himself as he was or wished to be? Stephen watched his face for some moments in silence. A cold sadness was there. He had spoken of himself, of his own loneliness which he feared.
*****
APRIL 15. Met her today point blank in Grafton Street. The crowd brought us together. We both stopped. She asked me why I never came, said she had heard all sorts of stories about me. This was only to gain time. Asked me was I writing poems? About whom? I asked her. This confused her more and I felt sorry and mean. Turned off that valve at once and opened the spiritualheroic refrigerating apparatus, invented and patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri. Talked rapidly of myself and my plans. In the midst of it unluckily I make a sudden gesture of a revolutionary nature. I must have looked like a fellow throwing a handful of peas into the air. People began to look at us. She shook hands a moment after and, in going away, said she hoped I would do what I said.
Now I call that friendly, don't you?
Yes, I liked her today. A little or much? Don't know. I liked her and it seems a new feeling to me. Then, in that case, all the rest, all that I thought I thought and all that I felt I felt, all the rest before now, in fact... O, give it up, old chap! Sleep it off!
APRIL 16. Away! Away!
The spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say: We are alone-come. And the voices say with them: We are your kinsman. And the air is thick with their company as they call to me, their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth.
APRIL 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
APRIL 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
Dublin, 1904 Trieste, 1914
THE END
from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
*****
APRIL 15. Met her today point blank in Grafton Street. The crowd brought us together. We both stopped. She asked me why I never came, said she had heard all sorts of stories about me. This was only to gain time. Asked me was I writing poems? About whom? I asked her. This confused her more and I felt sorry and mean. Turned off that valve at once and opened the spiritualheroic refrigerating apparatus, invented and patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri. Talked rapidly of myself and my plans. In the midst of it unluckily I make a sudden gesture of a revolutionary nature. I must have looked like a fellow throwing a handful of peas into the air. People began to look at us. She shook hands a moment after and, in going away, said she hoped I would do what I said.
Now I call that friendly, don't you?
Yes, I liked her today. A little or much? Don't know. I liked her and it seems a new feeling to me. Then, in that case, all the rest, all that I thought I thought and all that I felt I felt, all the rest before now, in fact... O, give it up, old chap! Sleep it off!
APRIL 16. Away! Away!
The spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say: We are alone-come. And the voices say with them: We are your kinsman. And the air is thick with their company as they call to me, their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth.
APRIL 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
APRIL 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
Dublin, 1904 Trieste, 1914
THE END
from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
[Work] Shell script -- calculate sum and mean
#!/bin/bash
sum=0.0
line=0
count=0
for i in `awk '{printf("%12.7f ",$1)}' $1`
do
line=$(( $line+1 ))
if [ $line -ge 200 -a $line -lt 600 ]
then
a=`echo $sum+$i | bc -l`
sum=$a
count=$(( $count + 1 ))
fi
done
echo sum = $sum
echo count = $count
a=`echo $sum/$count | bc -l`
echo mean = $a
exit 1
--------------------
simply select lines
#!/bin/bash
line=0
count=0
for i in `awk '{printf("%12.7f ",$1)}' $1`
do
line=$(( $line+1 ))
if [ $line -ge $2 -a $line -lt $3 ]
then
echo $i
fi
done
exit 1
Sunday, October 28, 2007
[Reading] Love of writing
My soul and heart were carried away by the great stroytelling. James Joyce's skill is overwhelming. I experienced the ecstasy of joy in the highest level for a long time. The subtleness is supreme. It can stir high waves for a dead heart. It can sooth the deep hurt for an anguish soul.
It is the right time to tell myself I do like reading and writing. My mind always follows my heart. My soul is born to be a sensor to feel the warmth and coldness of the world and the hearts, and a mirror to display the the consciousness flow. The acquiescence or the utterness both appease the inner turbulence which constantly upsetting me.
My future career will be under this guide. I will do something relating writing.
It is the right time to tell myself I do like reading and writing. My mind always follows my heart. My soul is born to be a sensor to feel the warmth and coldness of the world and the hearts, and a mirror to display the the consciousness flow. The acquiescence or the utterness both appease the inner turbulence which constantly upsetting me.
My future career will be under this guide. I will do something relating writing.
[Reading] Excerpts
As he descended the steps the impression which effaced his troubled self-communion was that of a mirthless mask reflecting a sunken day from the threshold of the college. The shadow, then, of the life of the college passed gravely over his consciousness. It was grave and ordered and passionless life that awaited him, a life without material cares. He wondered how he would pass the first night in the novitiate and with what dismay he would wake the first morning in the dormitory. The troubling odour of the long corridors of Clongowes came back to him and he heard the discreet murmur of the burning gasflames. At onece from every part of his being unrest began to irradiate. A feverish quickening of his pulse followed, and a din of meaningless words drove his reasoned thoughts hither and thither confusedly. His lungs dilated and sank as if he were inhaling a warm moist unsustaining air and he smelt again the moist warm air which hung in the bath in Clonowes above the sluggish turf-coloured water.
Some instinct, waking at these memories, stronger than education or piety, quickened within him at every near approach to that life, an instinct subtle and hostile, and armed him against acquiescence. The chill and order of the life repelled him. He saw himself rising in the cold of the morning and filing down with the others to early mass and trying vainly to struggle with his prayers against the fainting sickness of his stomach. He saw himself sitting at dinner with the community of a college. What, then, has become of that deep-rooted shyness of his which had made him loth to eat and drink under a strange roof? What has come of the pride of his spirit which had always made him conceive himself as a being apart in every order?
*****
He was passing at the moment before the jesuit house in Gardiner Street and wondered vaguely which window would be his if he ever joined the order. Then he wondered at the vagueness of his wonder, at the remoteness of his own soul from what he had hiterto imagined her sanctuary, at the frail hold which so many years of order and obedience had of him when once definite and irrevocable act of his threatened to end for ever, in time and in eternity, his freedom. The voice of the director urging upon him the proud claims of the church and the mystery and the power of the priestly office repeated itself idly in his memory. His soul was not there to hear and greet it and he knew now that the exhortation he had listened to had already fallen into an idle formal tale. he would never swing the thurible before the tabernacle as priest. His destiny was to be elusive of social and religious orders. The wisdom of the priest's appeal did not touch him to the quick. He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdowm of others himself wandering among the snares of the world.
The snares of the world were its ways of sin. He would fall. He had not yet fallen but he would fall silently, in an instant. Not to fall was too hard, too hard; and he felt the silent lapse of his soul, as it would be at some instant to come, falling, falling, but not yet fallen, still unfallen, but about to fall.
*****
His throat ached with a desire to cry alound, the cry of a hawk or eagle on high, to cry piercingly of his deliverance to the winds. This was the call of life to his soul not the dull gross voice of the world of duties and despair, not the inhuman voice that had called him to the pale service of the altar. An instant of wild flight had delivered him and the cry of triumph which his lips withheld cleft his brain.
*****
He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and graclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.
A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one who magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender hare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.
She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.
-Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy.
He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.
Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, and envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!
He halted suddenly and heard his heart in the silence. How far had he walked? What hour was it?
There was no human figure near him nor any sound borne to him over the air. But the tide was near the turn and already the day was on the wane. He turned landward and ran towards the shore and, running up the sloping beach reckless of the sharp shingle , found a sandy nook amid a ring of tufted sandknolls and lay down there that the peace and silence of the evening might still the riot of his blood.
He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast.
He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His eyelids trembled as if they felt the vast cyclic movement of the earth and her watchers, trembled as if they felt the strange light of some new world. His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other.
Evening had fallen when he woke and the sand and arid grasses of his bed glowed no longer. He rose slowly and, recalling the rapture of his sleep, sighed at its joy.
He climbed to the crest of the sandhill and gazed about him. Evening had fallen. A rim of the young monn cleft the pale waste of skyline, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand; and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools.
*****
- In pursuing these speculations, said the dean conclusively, there is, however, the danger of perishing of inanition. First you must take your degree. Set that before you as your first aim. Then, little by little, you will see your way. I mean in every sense, your way in life and in thinking. It may be uphill pedalling at first. Take Mr Moonan. He was a long time before he got to the top. But he got there.
- I may not have his talent, said Stephen quietly.
- You never know, said the dean brightly. We never can say what is in us. I most certainly should not be despondent. PER APSERA AD ASTRA.
---------------------------------------------
from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
Some instinct, waking at these memories, stronger than education or piety, quickened within him at every near approach to that life, an instinct subtle and hostile, and armed him against acquiescence. The chill and order of the life repelled him. He saw himself rising in the cold of the morning and filing down with the others to early mass and trying vainly to struggle with his prayers against the fainting sickness of his stomach. He saw himself sitting at dinner with the community of a college. What, then, has become of that deep-rooted shyness of his which had made him loth to eat and drink under a strange roof? What has come of the pride of his spirit which had always made him conceive himself as a being apart in every order?
*****
He was passing at the moment before the jesuit house in Gardiner Street and wondered vaguely which window would be his if he ever joined the order. Then he wondered at the vagueness of his wonder, at the remoteness of his own soul from what he had hiterto imagined her sanctuary, at the frail hold which so many years of order and obedience had of him when once definite and irrevocable act of his threatened to end for ever, in time and in eternity, his freedom. The voice of the director urging upon him the proud claims of the church and the mystery and the power of the priestly office repeated itself idly in his memory. His soul was not there to hear and greet it and he knew now that the exhortation he had listened to had already fallen into an idle formal tale. he would never swing the thurible before the tabernacle as priest. His destiny was to be elusive of social and religious orders. The wisdom of the priest's appeal did not touch him to the quick. He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdowm of others himself wandering among the snares of the world.
The snares of the world were its ways of sin. He would fall. He had not yet fallen but he would fall silently, in an instant. Not to fall was too hard, too hard; and he felt the silent lapse of his soul, as it would be at some instant to come, falling, falling, but not yet fallen, still unfallen, but about to fall.
*****
His throat ached with a desire to cry alound, the cry of a hawk or eagle on high, to cry piercingly of his deliverance to the winds. This was the call of life to his soul not the dull gross voice of the world of duties and despair, not the inhuman voice that had called him to the pale service of the altar. An instant of wild flight had delivered him and the cry of triumph which his lips withheld cleft his brain.
*****
He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and graclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.
A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one who magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender hare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.
She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.
-Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy.
He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.
Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, and envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!
He halted suddenly and heard his heart in the silence. How far had he walked? What hour was it?
There was no human figure near him nor any sound borne to him over the air. But the tide was near the turn and already the day was on the wane. He turned landward and ran towards the shore and, running up the sloping beach reckless of the sharp shingle , found a sandy nook amid a ring of tufted sandknolls and lay down there that the peace and silence of the evening might still the riot of his blood.
He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast.
He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His eyelids trembled as if they felt the vast cyclic movement of the earth and her watchers, trembled as if they felt the strange light of some new world. His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other.
Evening had fallen when he woke and the sand and arid grasses of his bed glowed no longer. He rose slowly and, recalling the rapture of his sleep, sighed at its joy.
He climbed to the crest of the sandhill and gazed about him. Evening had fallen. A rim of the young monn cleft the pale waste of skyline, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand; and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools.
*****
- In pursuing these speculations, said the dean conclusively, there is, however, the danger of perishing of inanition. First you must take your degree. Set that before you as your first aim. Then, little by little, you will see your way. I mean in every sense, your way in life and in thinking. It may be uphill pedalling at first. Take Mr Moonan. He was a long time before he got to the top. But he got there.
- I may not have his talent, said Stephen quietly.
- You never know, said the dean brightly. We never can say what is in us. I most certainly should not be despondent. PER APSERA AD ASTRA.
---------------------------------------------
from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
[Reading] How to avoid tireness?
The day before yesterday I joint a party and ate a lot. I had no time and interest to read any verse of the novels. I slept easily and woke at 3pm the next day. My mind was like in mud. I could not think clearly. This directly affected the reading during last night. I was pretty sleepy and yawned a lot. It became almost impossible to continue any concentrated reading. I rest my mind by diverging to do other simple tasks. However I did not really avoid the inactiveness of mind. Finally I simply went to bed and slept without any intellectual conscience.
This morning I got up relatively early. It was 11AM. It is the earliest one I did recently. I watched Larry King live and The Planet in Peril on CNN. I called my parents and skyped my wife.
Then I sat quietly and started my reading. It was still James Joyce's novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I was terribly sleepy and seemed tired. This part was specially boring for me, which had no chance to stir up any interest. I even started to doubt the skill of James Joyce. But I know it is the critical moment to accomplish something. It is the turning point. It must be very rewarding if I can properly act under such kind of situation. I was continuously yawning and sleepy and tired. All the sleepiness was radiated from my stomach.
After about half an hour I got recovered as from a waking dream. I again had a clear mind and fresh air. I again can perceive the beauty in the novel, which is surprisingly became intriguing. I did not know whether the novel itself became interesting or I became intellectual.
---------------
Today's Larry Kind live was about Stephen Colbert, a very popular American comedian.
One impressive story he told is that great skills can only be mastered through failure. Another strong feeling after watching this interview is that it is a good chance to learn English via watching comedies.
This morning I got up relatively early. It was 11AM. It is the earliest one I did recently. I watched Larry King live and The Planet in Peril on CNN. I called my parents and skyped my wife.
Then I sat quietly and started my reading. It was still James Joyce's novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I was terribly sleepy and seemed tired. This part was specially boring for me, which had no chance to stir up any interest. I even started to doubt the skill of James Joyce. But I know it is the critical moment to accomplish something. It is the turning point. It must be very rewarding if I can properly act under such kind of situation. I was continuously yawning and sleepy and tired. All the sleepiness was radiated from my stomach.
After about half an hour I got recovered as from a waking dream. I again had a clear mind and fresh air. I again can perceive the beauty in the novel, which is surprisingly became intriguing. I did not know whether the novel itself became interesting or I became intellectual.
---------------
Today's Larry Kind live was about Stephen Colbert, a very popular American comedian.
One impressive story he told is that great skills can only be mastered through failure. Another strong feeling after watching this interview is that it is a good chance to learn English via watching comedies.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
[Reading] Quote
No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored, solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
[Reading] Tracking
page 69
He began to speak in a quiet tone.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
He began to speak in a quiet tone.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
[Reading] An explanation of "Retreat"
- Now what is the meaning of this word RETREAT and why is it allowed on all hands to be a most salutary practice for all who desire to lead before God and in the eyes of men a truly christian life? A retreat, my dear boys, signifies a withdrawal of awhile from the cares of our life, the cares of this workaday world, in order to examine the state of our conscience, to reflect on the mysteries of holy religion and to understand better why we are here in this world. During these few days I intend to put before you some thoughts concerning the four last things. They are, as you know from your catechism, death, judgement, hell, and heaven. We shall try to understand them fully during these few days so that we may derive from the understanding of them a lasting benefit to our souls. And remember, my dear boys, that we have been sent into this world for one thing and for one thing alone: to do God's holy will and to serve our immortal souls. All else is worthless. One thing alone is needful, the salvation of one's soul. What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world if he suffer the loss of his immortal soul? Ah, my dear boys, believe me there is nothing in this wretched world that can make up for such a loss.
- I will ask you, therefore, my dear boys, to put away from your minds during these few days all worldly thoughts, whether of study or pleasure or ambition, and to give all your attention to the state of your souls. I need hardly remind you that during the days of the retreat all boys are expected to preserve a quiet and pious demeanour and to shun all loud unseemly pleasure. The elder boys, of course, will see that this custom is not infringed and I look especially to the prefects and officers of the sodality of Our Blessed Lady and of the sodality of the holy angels to set a good example to their fellow-students.
- Let us try, therefore, to make this retreat in honour of saint Francis with our whole heart and our whole mind. God's blessing will then be upon all your year's studies. But, above and beyond all, let this retreat be one to which you can look back in after years when maybe your are far from this college and among very different surroundings, to which you can look back with joy and thankfulness and give thanks to God for having granted you this occasion of laying the first foundation of a pious honourable zealous christian life. And if, as may so happen, there be at this moment in these benches any poor soul who has had the unutterable misfortune to lose God's holy grace and to fall into grievious sin, I fervently trust and pray that this retreat may be the turning point in the life of that soul. I pray to God through the merits of His zealous servant Francis Xavier, that such a soul may be led to sincere repentance and that the holy communion on saint Francis's day of this year may be a lasting covenant between God and that soul. For just and unjust, for saint and sinner alike, may this retreat be a memorable one.
- Help me, my dear little brothers in Christ. Help me by your pious attention, by your own devotion, by your outward demeanour. Banish from your minds all worldly thoughts and think only of the last things, death, judgement, hell, and heaven. He who remembers there things, says Ecclesiastes, shall not sin for ever. He who remembers the last things will act and think with them always before his eyes. He will live a good life and die a good death, believing and knowing that, if he has sacrificed much in this earthly life, it will be given to him a hundredfold and a thousandfold more in the life to come, in the kingdom without end-a blessing, my dear boys, which I wish you from my heart, one and all, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen!
from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
- I will ask you, therefore, my dear boys, to put away from your minds during these few days all worldly thoughts, whether of study or pleasure or ambition, and to give all your attention to the state of your souls. I need hardly remind you that during the days of the retreat all boys are expected to preserve a quiet and pious demeanour and to shun all loud unseemly pleasure. The elder boys, of course, will see that this custom is not infringed and I look especially to the prefects and officers of the sodality of Our Blessed Lady and of the sodality of the holy angels to set a good example to their fellow-students.
- Let us try, therefore, to make this retreat in honour of saint Francis with our whole heart and our whole mind. God's blessing will then be upon all your year's studies. But, above and beyond all, let this retreat be one to which you can look back in after years when maybe your are far from this college and among very different surroundings, to which you can look back with joy and thankfulness and give thanks to God for having granted you this occasion of laying the first foundation of a pious honourable zealous christian life. And if, as may so happen, there be at this moment in these benches any poor soul who has had the unutterable misfortune to lose God's holy grace and to fall into grievious sin, I fervently trust and pray that this retreat may be the turning point in the life of that soul. I pray to God through the merits of His zealous servant Francis Xavier, that such a soul may be led to sincere repentance and that the holy communion on saint Francis's day of this year may be a lasting covenant between God and that soul. For just and unjust, for saint and sinner alike, may this retreat be a memorable one.
- Help me, my dear little brothers in Christ. Help me by your pious attention, by your own devotion, by your outward demeanour. Banish from your minds all worldly thoughts and think only of the last things, death, judgement, hell, and heaven. He who remembers there things, says Ecclesiastes, shall not sin for ever. He who remembers the last things will act and think with them always before his eyes. He will live a good life and die a good death, believing and knowing that, if he has sacrificed much in this earthly life, it will be given to him a hundredfold and a thousandfold more in the life to come, in the kingdom without end-a blessing, my dear boys, which I wish you from my heart, one and all, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen!
from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
[Reading] Excerpts
A little wave of quiet mirth broke forth over the class of boys from the rector's grim smile. Stephen's heart began slowly to fold and fade with fear like a withering flower.
...
In the silence their dark fire kindled the dusk into a tawny glow. Stephen's heart had withered up like a flower of the desert that feels the simoom coming from afar.
*****
When the agony of shame had passed from him he tried to raise his soul from its abject powerlessness. God and the Blessed Virgin were too far from him: God was too great and stern and the Blessed Virgin too pure and holy. But he imagined that he stood near Emma in a wide land and, humbly and in tears, bent and kissed the elhow of her sleeve.
In the wide land under a tender lucid evening sky, a cloud drifting westward amid a pale green sea of heaven, they stood together, children that had erred. Their error had offended deeply God's majesty though it was the error of two children; but it had not offended her whose beauty IS NOT LIKE EARTHLY BEAUTY, DANGEROUS TO LOOK UPON, BUT LIKE THE MORNING STAR WHICH IS ITS EMBLEM, BRIGHT AND MUSICAL. The eyes were not offended which she turned upon him nor reproachful. She placed their hands together, hand in hand, and said, speaking to their hearts:
- Take hands, Stephen and Emma. It is a beautiful evening now in heaven. You have erred but you are always my children. It is one heart that loves another heart. Take hands together, my dear children, and you will be happy together and your hearts will love each other.
*****
Rain was falling on the chapel, on the garden, on the college. It would rain for ever, noiselessly. The water would rise inch by inch, covering the grass and shrubs, covering the trees and houses, covering the monuments and the mountain tops. All life would be choked off, noiselessly: birds, men, elephants, pigs, children: noiselessly floating corpses amid the little of the wreckage of the world. Forty days and forty nights the rain would fall till the waters covered the face of the earth.
I might be. Why not?
from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
...
In the silence their dark fire kindled the dusk into a tawny glow. Stephen's heart had withered up like a flower of the desert that feels the simoom coming from afar.
*****
When the agony of shame had passed from him he tried to raise his soul from its abject powerlessness. God and the Blessed Virgin were too far from him: God was too great and stern and the Blessed Virgin too pure and holy. But he imagined that he stood near Emma in a wide land and, humbly and in tears, bent and kissed the elhow of her sleeve.
In the wide land under a tender lucid evening sky, a cloud drifting westward amid a pale green sea of heaven, they stood together, children that had erred. Their error had offended deeply God's majesty though it was the error of two children; but it had not offended her whose beauty IS NOT LIKE EARTHLY BEAUTY, DANGEROUS TO LOOK UPON, BUT LIKE THE MORNING STAR WHICH IS ITS EMBLEM, BRIGHT AND MUSICAL. The eyes were not offended which she turned upon him nor reproachful. She placed their hands together, hand in hand, and said, speaking to their hearts:
- Take hands, Stephen and Emma. It is a beautiful evening now in heaven. You have erred but you are always my children. It is one heart that loves another heart. Take hands together, my dear children, and you will be happy together and your hearts will love each other.
*****
Rain was falling on the chapel, on the garden, on the college. It would rain for ever, noiselessly. The water would rise inch by inch, covering the grass and shrubs, covering the trees and houses, covering the monuments and the mountain tops. All life would be choked off, noiselessly: birds, men, elephants, pigs, children: noiselessly floating corpses amid the little of the wreckage of the world. Forty days and forty nights the rain would fall till the waters covered the face of the earth.
I might be. Why not?
from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
[Reading] besides, except, except for ...
from
http://www.12-18.com/bbs/printpage.asp?BoardID=11&ID=16920
Define except for:
ad. 除了(除...外)
例句与用法:
1.A banana is mainly pulp, except for its skin.香蕉除了果皮之外，主要是果肉。
2.No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.除非是傻瓜，从未有人为金钱以外的东西写文章。
3.This area is peaceful except for a few skirmishes in the distance.除了远处的零星的小冲突之外，这个地区是和平的。
4.I can do nothing except for swimming in the dog days.在三伏天里，除了游泳，我什么事也做不成。
5.It\'s a nice pub, except for the landlord.酒店很不错，但是那店主却不怎么样。
6.I can answer all the questions except for the last.所有的题我都会答, 只是最後一题不会.
7.The meal was excellent except for (ie with the exception of) the first course.这顿饭好极了, 只是第一道菜稍差.
8.Nothing remains except for me to say goodbye.最後我该说一声再见了.
--
Define except: [ ik\'\'sept ]
v. 除,除外,反对
prep. 除了...之外,若不是,除非
例句与用法:1.I excepted James from my invitation.
我没有邀请詹姆斯。
2.They all went to sleep except me.
除我之外，他们都去睡觉了。
3.I can answer all the questions except for the last.
所有的题我都会答, 只是最後一题不会.
4.Only children under five are excepted from this survey.
这次调查仅仅不包括五岁以下的儿童.
5.She remembered nothing (about him) except that his hair was black.
她（对他）什麽都不记得, 只记得他的头发是黑的.
6.The meal was excellent except for (ie with the exception of) the first course.
这顿饭好极了, 只是第一道菜稍差.
7.The two books are the same except (for the fact) that this one has an answer key at the back.
除了这本书後面有问题答案以外, 这两本书完全一样.
8.We all had to take part in the training run, with nobody excepted.
我们大家都得参加跑步训练, 无人例外.
--
Define besides:
ad. 此外
prep. 除...之外
例句与用法:1.The play was badly acted, besides being far too long.
这出戏除了太长之外, 演得也不好.
2.I haven\'t time to see the film besides, it\'s had dreadful reviews.
我没有时间去看这部影片--再说, 影评也诸多贬斥.
3.No one writes to me besides you.
除你以外, 没有人给我写信.
4.Peter is our youngest child, and we have three others besides.
彼得是我们最小的孩子, 我们另外还有三个孩子.
5.There will be five of us for dinner, besides John.
除约翰外, 还有我们五个人要一起吃饭.
6.She has no relations besides an aged aunt.
她除了有一个年老的伯母以外, 再没有亲戚了.
7.All other anxieties paled into insignificance besides the possibility of war.
和可能打仗相比，所有其他忧虑都变得微不足道了。
--
Define but for:
倘没有,要不是
例句与用法:1.But for your advice, I should have failed.
要不是你的忠告，我会失败的。
2.But for music (=Were it not for music), life would be dull.
要不是音乐，人生会很无聊。
3.But for the rain we would have had a nice holiday.
要不是因为下雨, 我们的假日一定过得很惬意.
4.But for the note you left, I would have forgotten to close the door.
倘非你留的条子我就忘记关门了。
5.But for the safety-belt I wouldn\'t be alive today.
若没有安全带，我就不能活到今天。
6.This vase would be perfect but for a few small flaws in its base.
这花瓶底部没有那几个小斑点就十全十美了.
7.The sale was supposed to last for a week, but for all practical purposes it\'s over.
减价销售原来预料要持续一周, 然而实际上现在已经结束了.
8.I like most cities, but for me New York is (the) tops.
一般的城市我都很喜欢, 但最喜欢纽约.
http://www.12-18.com/bbs/printpage.asp?BoardID=11&ID=16920
Define except for:
ad. 除了(除...外)
例句与用法:
1.A banana is mainly pulp, except for its skin.香蕉除了果皮之外，主要是果肉。
2.No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.除非是傻瓜，从未有人为金钱以外的东西写文章。
3.This area is peaceful except for a few skirmishes in the distance.除了远处的零星的小冲突之外，这个地区是和平的。
4.I can do nothing except for swimming in the dog days.在三伏天里，除了游泳，我什么事也做不成。
5.It\'s a nice pub, except for the landlord.酒店很不错，但是那店主却不怎么样。
6.I can answer all the questions except for the last.所有的题我都会答, 只是最後一题不会.
7.The meal was excellent except for (ie with the exception of) the first course.这顿饭好极了, 只是第一道菜稍差.
8.Nothing remains except for me to say goodbye.最後我该说一声再见了.
--
Define except: [ ik\'\'sept ]
v. 除,除外,反对
prep. 除了...之外,若不是,除非
例句与用法:1.I excepted James from my invitation.
我没有邀请詹姆斯。
2.They all went to sleep except me.
除我之外，他们都去睡觉了。
3.I can answer all the questions except for the last.
所有的题我都会答, 只是最後一题不会.
4.Only children under five are excepted from this survey.
这次调查仅仅不包括五岁以下的儿童.
5.She remembered nothing (about him) except that his hair was black.
她（对他）什麽都不记得, 只记得他的头发是黑的.
6.The meal was excellent except for (ie with the exception of) the first course.
这顿饭好极了, 只是第一道菜稍差.
7.The two books are the same except (for the fact) that this one has an answer key at the back.
除了这本书後面有问题答案以外, 这两本书完全一样.
8.We all had to take part in the training run, with nobody excepted.
我们大家都得参加跑步训练, 无人例外.
--
Define besides:
ad. 此外
prep. 除...之外
例句与用法:1.The play was badly acted, besides being far too long.
这出戏除了太长之外, 演得也不好.
2.I haven\'t time to see the film besides, it\'s had dreadful reviews.
我没有时间去看这部影片--再说, 影评也诸多贬斥.
3.No one writes to me besides you.
除你以外, 没有人给我写信.
4.Peter is our youngest child, and we have three others besides.
彼得是我们最小的孩子, 我们另外还有三个孩子.
5.There will be five of us for dinner, besides John.
除约翰外, 还有我们五个人要一起吃饭.
6.She has no relations besides an aged aunt.
她除了有一个年老的伯母以外, 再没有亲戚了.
7.All other anxieties paled into insignificance besides the possibility of war.
和可能打仗相比，所有其他忧虑都变得微不足道了。
--
Define but for:
倘没有,要不是
例句与用法:1.But for your advice, I should have failed.
要不是你的忠告，我会失败的。
2.But for music (=Were it not for music), life would be dull.
要不是音乐，人生会很无聊。
3.But for the rain we would have had a nice holiday.
要不是因为下雨, 我们的假日一定过得很惬意.
4.But for the note you left, I would have forgotten to close the door.
倘非你留的条子我就忘记关门了。
5.But for the safety-belt I wouldn\'t be alive today.
若没有安全带，我就不能活到今天。
6.This vase would be perfect but for a few small flaws in its base.
这花瓶底部没有那几个小斑点就十全十美了.
7.The sale was supposed to last for a week, but for all practical purposes it\'s over.
减价销售原来预料要持续一周, 然而实际上现在已经结束了.
8.I like most cities, but for me New York is (the) tops.
一般的城市我都很喜欢, 但最喜欢纽约.
[Life] running
This afternoon I run a lot. It lasted more than one hour.
In most of the time, I run after another runner.
During the course I once wanted to give up. But I asked myself whether recently I insisted on doing something and completed it. "No!" I talked to myself. Thus today is the right time to change the situation. I want to finished the course. It means I will stop until the runner before me stops. Sometimes my shoulder pains me. Sometimes my stomach hurts me. Sometimes I want to give up. But my legs continue steadily. The images in my mind change rapidly. Sometimes I feel pretty well and pride.
Finally the runner who guided me stopped. She turned around and stared at me for a while. I thought she was annoyed. I could not think too much. I just run another half round and stopped. There rises a novel feeling, a feeling of comfort, a feeling a accomplishment, a feeling of release or a feeling of pride.
I further relaxed myself and exercised my upbody. In the tranquity I felt being in debt to that runner who guided me. It is a valuable lesson. If I run together or after another people with fun, I can easily run a lot and finish it with ease. On the contrary I will run hard and run much less if I run alone, even though I make a strong decision to run as much as possible.
In most of the time, I run after another runner.
During the course I once wanted to give up. But I asked myself whether recently I insisted on doing something and completed it. "No!" I talked to myself. Thus today is the right time to change the situation. I want to finished the course. It means I will stop until the runner before me stops. Sometimes my shoulder pains me. Sometimes my stomach hurts me. Sometimes I want to give up. But my legs continue steadily. The images in my mind change rapidly. Sometimes I feel pretty well and pride.
Finally the runner who guided me stopped. She turned around and stared at me for a while. I thought she was annoyed. I could not think too much. I just run another half round and stopped. There rises a novel feeling, a feeling of comfort, a feeling a accomplishment, a feeling of release or a feeling of pride.
I further relaxed myself and exercised my upbody. In the tranquity I felt being in debt to that runner who guided me. It is a valuable lesson. If I run together or after another people with fun, I can easily run a lot and finish it with ease. On the contrary I will run hard and run much less if I run alone, even though I make a strong decision to run as much as possible.
[Work] shell programming
Counting files greater than a certain size
#!/bin/sh
# others/countsize
case $# in
0) echo 'Usage: ' $prog ''; exit 1;;
esac
limit=$1
count=0
for f in *
do
if test -f $f
then
size=`ls -s $f| awk '{print $1}'`
if test $size -ge $limit
then
count=$[count+1]
echo $f
fi
fi
done
echo $count "files bigger than " $limit"K"
[Work] alias and export in bash
alias idisplay="/home/user/proj/IBR/ifactory/viewer/Debian3.1_max/idisplay"
alias iproc="/home/user/proj/IBR/filter/Debian3.1_max/iproc"
export FILTER_PATH=/home/user/proj/IBR/filter/single/Debian3.1_max
[Work] bashrc
# ~/.bashrc: executed by bash(1) for non-login shells.
# see /usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files (in the package bash-doc)
# for examples
# If not running interactively, don't do anything:
[ -z "$PS1" ] && return
# don't put duplicate lines in the history. See bash(1) for more options
#export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups
# check the window size after each command and, if necessary,
# update the values of LINES and COLUMNS.
shopt -s checkwinsize
# enable color support of ls and also add handy aliases
if [ "$TERM" != "dumb" ]; then
eval "`dircolors -b`"
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
#alias dir='ls --color=auto --format=vertical'
#alias vdir='ls --color=auto --format=long'
fi
# some more ls aliases
#alias ll='ls -l'
#alias la='ls -A'
#alias l='ls -CF'
# set variable identifying the chroot you work in (used in the prompt below)
if [ -z "$debian_chroot" -a -r /etc/debian_chroot ]; then
debian_chroot=$(cat /etc/debian_chroot)
fi
# set a fancy prompt (non-color, unless we know we "want" color)
case "$TERM" in
xterm-color)
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '
;;
*)
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ '
;;
esac
# Comment in the above and uncomment this below for a color prompt
#PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '
# If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir
case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD}\007"'
;;
*)
;;
esac
# enable programmable completion features (you don't need to enable
# this, if it's already enabled in /etc/bash.bashrc and /etc/profiles
# sources /etc/bash.bashrc).
#if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
# . /etc/bash_completion
#fi
alias idisplay="/home/user/proj/IBR/ifactory/viewer/Debian3.1_max/idisplay"
alias iproc="/home/user/proj/IBR/filter/Debian3.1_max/iproc"
export FILTER_PATH=/home/user/proj/IBR/filter/single/Debian3.1_max
alias ll="ls -l"
xset b off
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:/home/user/opencv/libs
export PATH=~/bin:${PATH}
export PBRT_SEARCHPATH=$HOME/pbrt/bin
export VRIP_DIR=/home/user/VripPack/vrippack-0.3/src/vrip
export VRIP_TCL_LIBRARY=/home/user/VripPack/vrippack-0.3/lib/linux/tcl8.4
export VRIP_TK_LIBRARY=/home/user/VripPack/vrippack-0.3/lib/linux/tk8.4
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:/home/user/VripPack/vrippack-0.3/lib/linux
export SCANALYZE_DIR=$HOME/scanalyze/scanalyze-1.0.3
export PATH=$HOME/pbrt/bin:$HOME/proj/tools/ibrtools/bin:$HOME/proj/tools/ppmtools/bin:$HOME/proj/tools/tiff16tools/bin:$HOME/proj/tools/tiff8tools/bin:$HOME/scanalyze/scanalyze-1.0.3:$HOME/trimesh2:/home/user/VripPack/vrippack-0.3/bin:${PATH}
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
[Writing] writing style
I want to develop a writing style that is plain, simple but with all the deep meaning, underlying power, rhythm, and suspension. A sparsely sketch of the environment, people, and conversations flows murmurously and tell the tumult of desire, hope, love and hatred.
[Life] The best moment
The best part of a novel is the description of a mental struggle or conflict.
The golden time of a research life is the moment when there are grand challenges, assuming we still have strong desire and are keeping the hope.
Don't being afraid when there is a trouble, failure, or deadlock. Only under such kind of situations, the inner power of our imagination and creativity will be released. The miracles are always born from them.
The golden time of a research life is the moment when there are grand challenges, assuming we still have strong desire and are keeping the hope.
Don't being afraid when there is a trouble, failure, or deadlock. Only under such kind of situations, the inner power of our imagination and creativity will be released. The miracles are always born from them.
[Reading] Excerpts
"
He heard the sob passing loudly down his father's throat and opened his eyes with a nervous impulse. The sunlight breaking suddenly on his sight turned the sky and clouds into a fantastic world of sombre masses with lakelike spaces of dark rosy light. His very brain was sick and powerless. He could scarcely interpret the letters of the signboards of the shops. By his monstrous way of life he seemed to have put himself beyond the limits of reality. Nothing moved him or spoke to him from the real world unless he heard in it an echo of the infuriated cries within him. he could respond to no earthly or human appeal, dumb and insensible to the call of summer and gladness and companionship, wearied and dejected by his father's voice. He could scarcely recognize as his own thoughts, and repeated slowly to himself:
- I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my father whose name is Simon Dedalus. We are in Cork, in Ireland. Cork is a city. Our room is in Victoria Hotel. Victoria and Stephen and Simon. Simon and Stephen and Victoria. Names.
"
"
He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancour that had divided him from mother and brother and sister. He felt that he was hardly of the one blood with them but stood to them rather in the mystical kinship of fosterage, foterchild and fosterbrother.
He turned to appease the fierce longings of his heart before which everything else was idle and alien. He cared little that he was in mortal sin, that his life had grown to be a tissue of subterfuge and falsehood. Beside the savage desire within him to realize the enormities which he brooded on nothing was sacred. he bore cynically with the shameful details of his secret riots in which he exulted to defile with patience whatever image had attracted his eyes. By day and by night he moved among distorted images of the outer world. A figure that had seemed to him by day demure and innocent came towards him by night through the winding darkness of sleep, her face transfigured by a lecherous cunning, her eyes bright with brutish joy. Only the morning pained him with its dim memory of dark orgiastic riot, its keen and humiliating sense of transgression.
He returned to his wanderings. The veiled autumnal evenings led him from street to street as they had led him years before along the quiet avenues of Blackrock. But no vision of trim front gardens or of kindly lights in the windows poured a tender influnce upon him now. Only at times, in the pauses of his desire, when the luxury that was wasting him gave room to a softer languor, the image of Mercedes traversed the background of his memory. He saw again the small white house and the garden of rose-bushes on the road that led to the mountains and he remembered the sadly proud gesture of refusal which he was make there, standing with her in the moonlit garden after years of estrangement and adventure. At those moments the soft speeches of Claude Melnotte rose to his lips and eased his unrest. A tender premonition touched him of the tryst he had then looked forward to and, in spite of the horrible reality which lay between his hope of then and now, of the holy encounter he had then imagined at which weakness and timidity and inexperience were to fall from him.
Such moments passed and the wasting fires of lust sprang up again. The verses passed from his lips and the inarticulate cries and the unspoken brutal words rushed forth from his brain to force a passage. His blood was in revolt. He wandered up and down the dark slimy streets peering into the gloom of lanes and doorways, listening eagerly for any sound. he moaned to himself like some baffled prowling beast. He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin. He felt some dark presence moving irresistibly upon him from the darkness, a presence subtle and murmurous as a flood filling him wholly with itself. Its murmur besieged his being. His hands clenched convulsively and his teeth set together as he suffered the agony of its penetration. He stretched out his arms in the street to hold fast the frail swooning form that eluded him and incited him: and the cry that he had strangled for so long in his throat isssued from his lips. It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry for an iniquitous abandonment, a cry which was but the echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the oozing wall of a urinal.
"
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
He heard the sob passing loudly down his father's throat and opened his eyes with a nervous impulse. The sunlight breaking suddenly on his sight turned the sky and clouds into a fantastic world of sombre masses with lakelike spaces of dark rosy light. His very brain was sick and powerless. He could scarcely interpret the letters of the signboards of the shops. By his monstrous way of life he seemed to have put himself beyond the limits of reality. Nothing moved him or spoke to him from the real world unless he heard in it an echo of the infuriated cries within him. he could respond to no earthly or human appeal, dumb and insensible to the call of summer and gladness and companionship, wearied and dejected by his father's voice. He could scarcely recognize as his own thoughts, and repeated slowly to himself:
- I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my father whose name is Simon Dedalus. We are in Cork, in Ireland. Cork is a city. Our room is in Victoria Hotel. Victoria and Stephen and Simon. Simon and Stephen and Victoria. Names.
"
"
He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancour that had divided him from mother and brother and sister. He felt that he was hardly of the one blood with them but stood to them rather in the mystical kinship of fosterage, foterchild and fosterbrother.
He turned to appease the fierce longings of his heart before which everything else was idle and alien. He cared little that he was in mortal sin, that his life had grown to be a tissue of subterfuge and falsehood. Beside the savage desire within him to realize the enormities which he brooded on nothing was sacred. he bore cynically with the shameful details of his secret riots in which he exulted to defile with patience whatever image had attracted his eyes. By day and by night he moved among distorted images of the outer world. A figure that had seemed to him by day demure and innocent came towards him by night through the winding darkness of sleep, her face transfigured by a lecherous cunning, her eyes bright with brutish joy. Only the morning pained him with its dim memory of dark orgiastic riot, its keen and humiliating sense of transgression.
He returned to his wanderings. The veiled autumnal evenings led him from street to street as they had led him years before along the quiet avenues of Blackrock. But no vision of trim front gardens or of kindly lights in the windows poured a tender influnce upon him now. Only at times, in the pauses of his desire, when the luxury that was wasting him gave room to a softer languor, the image of Mercedes traversed the background of his memory. He saw again the small white house and the garden of rose-bushes on the road that led to the mountains and he remembered the sadly proud gesture of refusal which he was make there, standing with her in the moonlit garden after years of estrangement and adventure. At those moments the soft speeches of Claude Melnotte rose to his lips and eased his unrest. A tender premonition touched him of the tryst he had then looked forward to and, in spite of the horrible reality which lay between his hope of then and now, of the holy encounter he had then imagined at which weakness and timidity and inexperience were to fall from him.
Such moments passed and the wasting fires of lust sprang up again. The verses passed from his lips and the inarticulate cries and the unspoken brutal words rushed forth from his brain to force a passage. His blood was in revolt. He wandered up and down the dark slimy streets peering into the gloom of lanes and doorways, listening eagerly for any sound. he moaned to himself like some baffled prowling beast. He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin. He felt some dark presence moving irresistibly upon him from the darkness, a presence subtle and murmurous as a flood filling him wholly with itself. Its murmur besieged his being. His hands clenched convulsively and his teeth set together as he suffered the agony of its penetration. He stretched out his arms in the street to hold fast the frail swooning form that eluded him and incited him: and the cry that he had strangled for so long in his throat isssued from his lips. It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry for an iniquitous abandonment, a cry which was but the echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the oozing wall of a urinal.
"
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
[Writing] Follow the flow of mind.
The best way to write smoothly is to directly describe what is the flow of the mind without any hesitation.
[Reading] What an astonishment!
I was totally absorbed by James Joyce's novel.
The inner world of Stephen arouses my echos. I recalled the right moments with great mental troubles. The state of tumult, the desire, the hope, the honour, the tornament, the tranquility of mind, and the madness tell the story exactly what I want to do.
I simply claim this book is the first great book I read in English. A REAL BOOK!
A great book always tells the story in an easy way. It is easy to read. It is easy to understand. It is easy to ignite imagination. A great book can only be read with heart and soul, whose owner itself should be a grave man.
The inner world of Stephen arouses my echos. I recalled the right moments with great mental troubles. The state of tumult, the desire, the hope, the honour, the tornament, the tranquility of mind, and the madness tell the story exactly what I want to do.
I simply claim this book is the first great book I read in English. A REAL BOOK!
A great book always tells the story in an easy way. It is easy to read. It is easy to understand. It is easy to ignite imagination. A great book can only be read with heart and soul, whose owner itself should be a grave man.
[Reading] Excerpts
"
While he was still repeating the CONFITEOR amid the indulgent laughter of his hearers and while the scenes of that malignant episode were still passing sharply and swiftly before his mind he wondered why he bore no malice now to those who had tormented him. He has not forgotten a whit of their cowardice and cruelty but the memory of it call forth no anger from him. All the descriptions of fierce love and hatred which he had met in books had seemed to him therefore unreal. Even that night as he stumbled homewards along Jones's Road he had felt that some power was divesting him of that sudden-woven anger as easily as a fruit is divested of its soft ripe peel.
"
"
He remained standing with his two companions at the end of the shed listening idly to their talk or to the bursts of applause in the theatre. She was sitting there among the others perhaps waiting for him to appear. He tried to recall her appearance but could not. He could remember only that she had worn a shawl about her head like a cowl and that her dark eyes had invited and unnerved him. He wondered had he been in her thoughts as she had been in his. Then in the dark and unseen by the other two he rested the tips of the fingers of one hand upon the palm of the other hand, scarcely touching it lightly. But the pressure of her fingers had been lighter and steadier: and suddenly the memory of their touch traversed his brain and body like an invisible wave.
"
"
This spirit of quarrelsome comradeship which he had observed lately in his rival had not seduced Stephen from his habits of quiet obedience. He mistrusted the turbulence and doubted the sincerity of such comradeship which seemed to him a sorry anticipation of manhood. The question of honour here raised was, like all such questions, trivial to him. While his mind had been pursuing its intangible phantoms and turning in irresolution from such pursuit he had heard about him the constant voices of his father and of his masters, urging him to be a gentleman above all things and urging him to be a good catholic above all things. These voices had now come to be hollow-sounding voice in his ears. When the gymnasium had been opened he had heard another voice urging him to be strong and manly and healthy and when the movement towards national revival had begun to be felt in the college yet another voice had bidden him be true to his country and help to raise up her language and tradition. In the profane world, as he foresaw, a worldly voice would bid him raise up his father's fallen state by his labour and, meanwhile, the voice of his school comrades urged him to be a decent fellow, to shield others from blame or to beg them off and to do his best to get free days for the school. And it was the din of all these hollow-sounding voices that made him halt irresolutely in the pursuit of phantoms. He gave them ear only for a time but he was happy only when he was far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades.
"
"
Without waiting for his father's questions he ran across the road and began to walk at breakneck speed down the hill. He hardly knew where he was walking. Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours in maddening incense before the eyes of him mind. He strode down the hill amid the tumult of sudden-risen vapours of wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire. They streamed upwards before his anguished eyes in dense and maddening fumes and passed away above him till at last the air was clear and cold again.
A film still veiled his eyes but they burned no longer. A power, akin to that which had often made anger or resentment fall from him, brought his steps to rest. He stood still and gazed up at the sombre porch of the morgue and from that to the dark cobbled laneway at its side. He saw the word LOTTS on the wall of the lane and breathed slowly the rank heavy air.
That is horse piss and rotten straw, he thought. It is a good odour to breathe. It will calm my heart. My heart is quite calm now. I will go back.
"
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
While he was still repeating the CONFITEOR amid the indulgent laughter of his hearers and while the scenes of that malignant episode were still passing sharply and swiftly before his mind he wondered why he bore no malice now to those who had tormented him. He has not forgotten a whit of their cowardice and cruelty but the memory of it call forth no anger from him. All the descriptions of fierce love and hatred which he had met in books had seemed to him therefore unreal. Even that night as he stumbled homewards along Jones's Road he had felt that some power was divesting him of that sudden-woven anger as easily as a fruit is divested of its soft ripe peel.
"
"
He remained standing with his two companions at the end of the shed listening idly to their talk or to the bursts of applause in the theatre. She was sitting there among the others perhaps waiting for him to appear. He tried to recall her appearance but could not. He could remember only that she had worn a shawl about her head like a cowl and that her dark eyes had invited and unnerved him. He wondered had he been in her thoughts as she had been in his. Then in the dark and unseen by the other two he rested the tips of the fingers of one hand upon the palm of the other hand, scarcely touching it lightly. But the pressure of her fingers had been lighter and steadier: and suddenly the memory of their touch traversed his brain and body like an invisible wave.
"
"
This spirit of quarrelsome comradeship which he had observed lately in his rival had not seduced Stephen from his habits of quiet obedience. He mistrusted the turbulence and doubted the sincerity of such comradeship which seemed to him a sorry anticipation of manhood. The question of honour here raised was, like all such questions, trivial to him. While his mind had been pursuing its intangible phantoms and turning in irresolution from such pursuit he had heard about him the constant voices of his father and of his masters, urging him to be a gentleman above all things and urging him to be a good catholic above all things. These voices had now come to be hollow-sounding voice in his ears. When the gymnasium had been opened he had heard another voice urging him to be strong and manly and healthy and when the movement towards national revival had begun to be felt in the college yet another voice had bidden him be true to his country and help to raise up her language and tradition. In the profane world, as he foresaw, a worldly voice would bid him raise up his father's fallen state by his labour and, meanwhile, the voice of his school comrades urged him to be a decent fellow, to shield others from blame or to beg them off and to do his best to get free days for the school. And it was the din of all these hollow-sounding voices that made him halt irresolutely in the pursuit of phantoms. He gave them ear only for a time but he was happy only when he was far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades.
"
"
Without waiting for his father's questions he ran across the road and began to walk at breakneck speed down the hill. He hardly knew where he was walking. Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours in maddening incense before the eyes of him mind. He strode down the hill amid the tumult of sudden-risen vapours of wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire. They streamed upwards before his anguished eyes in dense and maddening fumes and passed away above him till at last the air was clear and cold again.
A film still veiled his eyes but they burned no longer. A power, akin to that which had often made anger or resentment fall from him, brought his steps to rest. He stood still and gazed up at the sombre porch of the morgue and from that to the dark cobbled laneway at its side. He saw the word LOTTS on the wall of the lane and breathed slowly the rank heavy air.
That is horse piss and rotten straw, he thought. It is a good odour to breathe. It will calm my heart. My heart is quite calm now. I will go back.
"
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
[Work] Time to focus
It is the right to concentrate my all energy and fight for the CVPR deadline.
I have wandered for too long time.
Tomorrow I will start collecting the necessary papers on phase-shifting. I will clean the ideas and programs. I will start real work.
Use your imaginative mind!
In the spare time of doing research I will continue reading great books. The first sample will be the A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
I have wandered for too long time.
Tomorrow I will start collecting the necessary papers on phase-shifting. I will clean the ideas and programs. I will start real work.
Use your imaginative mind!
In the spare time of doing research I will continue reading great books. The first sample will be the A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Monday, October 22, 2007
[Reading] Excerpts
"He returned to Mercedes and, as he brooded upon her image, a strange unrest crept into his blood. Sometimes a fever gathered within him and led him to rove alone in the evening along the quiet avenue. The peace of the gardens and the kindly lights in the windows poured a tender influence into his restless heart. The noise of children at play annoyed him and their silly voices made him feel, even more keenly than he had felt at Clongowes, that he was different from others. He did not want to play. He wnated to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how, but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they has know each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be alone, surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured.
He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment.
"
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment.
"
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
[Reading] reading with my heart
I did enjoy the book Pride and Prejudice. However my heart is not really touched. It is only about fine description. There are some highlights that made me excited. But they are scarcely.
Tonight I had great depression. I'm not interesting to anything. I watched CNN. I surfed the web. I read some blogs. I checked news. I drank tea and ate apple. I listen music and admired some pictures. My mind, however, was always loose. My spirit was unfortunately low.
I have no intent to read academic papers. I have no interest to think about any project. No great invention can catch my attention.
It is a lone life. A lone life is boring. It is alwayse depressing.
I turned to the novels by James Joyce.
I compiled the plain text of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to PDF.
I started the reading from Chapter 2. At the beginning, my mood was still depressed. I forgot the accurate moment when I got deeply absorbed. I like this novel. I like the style. I like the think. I like the way. I like the boy Stephen. I love all these things. I gained power, great power supporting my fearless fighting. My imagination is stretched and expands with boundless brave.
Tonight I had great depression. I'm not interesting to anything. I watched CNN. I surfed the web. I read some blogs. I checked news. I drank tea and ate apple. I listen music and admired some pictures. My mind, however, was always loose. My spirit was unfortunately low.
I have no intent to read academic papers. I have no interest to think about any project. No great invention can catch my attention.
It is a lone life. A lone life is boring. It is alwayse depressing.
I turned to the novels by James Joyce.
I compiled the plain text of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to PDF.
I started the reading from Chapter 2. At the beginning, my mood was still depressed. I forgot the accurate moment when I got deeply absorbed. I like this novel. I like the style. I like the think. I like the way. I like the boy Stephen. I love all these things. I gained power, great power supporting my fearless fighting. My imagination is stretched and expands with boundless brave.
[Reading] Finished P&P
Last night I finished the reading of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
The last part of this booking is astonishing. I was totally absorbed by some paragraphs. Some of the conversations or quarrels are really great.
The most valuable lesson from reading P&P is the skill to describe the fine detail and how to distill the essence from the worldly common daily life.
Another notable feature of an attractive novel is how to first conceive a conflict and put the suspense there and then tell the story about how it get out. It is also a basis for intriguing storytelling.
The last part of this booking is astonishing. I was totally absorbed by some paragraphs. Some of the conversations or quarrels are really great.
The most valuable lesson from reading P&P is the skill to describe the fine detail and how to distill the essence from the worldly common daily life.
Another notable feature of an attractive novel is how to first conceive a conflict and put the suspense there and then tell the story about how it get out. It is also a basis for intriguing storytelling.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
[Reading] reading company or community
The love of reading will finally lead to start a club, a company, a network or a community for reading. Audible reading will benefit a large range of people, from blind people or illiberal people, to highly educated people. I have enormous ideas to how to start, promote and empower this business. All of them are from my heart and experience.
This morning I got awake with this idea and be totally absorbed. I was too excited to do anything else, even the simple dressing.
This morning I got awake with this idea and be totally absorbed. I was too excited to do anything else, even the simple dressing.
Friday, October 19, 2007
[Reading] Growing confidence and comfort
I already started the reading journey for some times. The more I read the more confident and comfortable I become. The former fear coming to English evolved into big joy in reading excellent stories. The confidence, knowledge, skill and comfort grow in parallel.
[Reading] Reading blogs
I tried to read some blogs on Time. It is valuable to find out the interesting meaning of blog writing. The style of writing a blog is typically casual and loose. It is close to daily talking or conversation. This characteristic makes reading blogs a rewarding experience and make me more capable of understanding daily and "real" English.
[Life] The Gifts from Reading
This afternoon I proofread a thesis by one of my friends.
It took me about one hour to read through the abstract, introduction and conclusion. I found lots of grammar errors and absence of clarity. When I finished the reading of the introduction and marked almost all the lines with circles and crosses, I had no patience to continue chapter by chapter and simple jumped to the conclusion. With no surprise I easily found a lots of obstacles for understanding and some improper presentations. Instead of going back to the beginning of the thesis and continuing the proofreading, I was determined to stop the proofreading anyway and composed an email to the friend, asking for the opportunity to discuss the thesis face to face.
I'm happy with this kind of experience. I enjoy the ease of reading in English and the accomplishment of mastering English to some extend. Despite of knowing that I'm just at the right beginning of long journey, it is still a big reward and a genuine gift, which is invaluable and encouraging. I'm just talking to myself keep going.
This afternoon, before the proofreading, I collected several great books and their accompanying audios. Some of them are poets. Some of them are novels. Some of them are modern. Some of them are old. The most noticeable of them are probably the books by James Joyce, e.g. Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Dubliners. With special favor upon Irish writers, I'm determined to learn the art of storytelling from the great writers from Ireland. They are astonishingly special and powerful. My heart vibrates as always with the lines in their masterpieces.
With no restriction to Irish books, I want to exercise my mind in other style. I will read Jane Austen, Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Edward Morgan Forster, Charles Dickens, Henry James, Jack London, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and W. H. Hudson. The joy, excitement, knowledge, and deep thinking are all the rewards for an involved reading.
It took me about one hour to read through the abstract, introduction and conclusion. I found lots of grammar errors and absence of clarity. When I finished the reading of the introduction and marked almost all the lines with circles and crosses, I had no patience to continue chapter by chapter and simple jumped to the conclusion. With no surprise I easily found a lots of obstacles for understanding and some improper presentations. Instead of going back to the beginning of the thesis and continuing the proofreading, I was determined to stop the proofreading anyway and composed an email to the friend, asking for the opportunity to discuss the thesis face to face.
I'm happy with this kind of experience. I enjoy the ease of reading in English and the accomplishment of mastering English to some extend. Despite of knowing that I'm just at the right beginning of long journey, it is still a big reward and a genuine gift, which is invaluable and encouraging. I'm just talking to myself keep going.
This afternoon, before the proofreading, I collected several great books and their accompanying audios. Some of them are poets. Some of them are novels. Some of them are modern. Some of them are old. The most noticeable of them are probably the books by James Joyce, e.g. Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Dubliners. With special favor upon Irish writers, I'm determined to learn the art of storytelling from the great writers from Ireland. They are astonishingly special and powerful. My heart vibrates as always with the lines in their masterpieces.
With no restriction to Irish books, I want to exercise my mind in other style. I will read Jane Austen, Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Edward Morgan Forster, Charles Dickens, Henry James, Jack London, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and W. H. Hudson. The joy, excitement, knowledge, and deep thinking are all the rewards for an involved reading.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
[Book] Tracking reading
I will start continuous reading and keep the records and notes in this blog. The first book will be
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
I will listen the audio first and then read the text in depth.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
I will listen the audio first and then read the text in depth.
[Life] time to run
I have two main hobbies, one is reading and the other is running.
Both of them empower my body and brain.
For an alone life it is the best moment to pick up these hobbies.
This afternoon I run about 5000m and did extra exercise for the up body.
I felt comfort and gained power.
Both of them empower my body and brain.
For an alone life it is the best moment to pick up these hobbies.
This afternoon I run about 5000m and did extra exercise for the up body.
I felt comfort and gained power.
[Book] It's reading time
The inner power of loving reading finally drove me to read the greatest books.
I found The Project Gutenberg is the best place to go. I will first read
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and
Irish Wonders by D. R. McAnally.
The great and practical way to learn and master a language is to read the greatest books and to learn in using it, writing, reading, and speaking.
Reading great books is not only an experience to learn or practice a language, it is also a rewarding journey to exercise the mind.
I found The Project Gutenberg is the best place to go. I will first read
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and
Irish Wonders by D. R. McAnally.
The great and practical way to learn and master a language is to read the greatest books and to learn in using it, writing, reading, and speaking.
Reading great books is not only an experience to learn or practice a language, it is also a rewarding journey to exercise the mind.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
[Life] 一个人的晚餐
早上送妻子踏上回国的旅程
本打算让妻子独立一次
所以让她买了单独的火车票
但还是改变主意送她到州的边境
我的学生证到哪个地方有效
让妻子在我肩上睡一会
妻子嫌我的肩膀太瘦
到了分别的时候
我下车
妻子挥手与我作别
我摇摇头
外面的空气很湿很冷
这是一个山谷里的小镇
看见检票员在检查上下车的人
示意司机可以开车了
那么一丝念头闪过
我想跳上车给妻子一个惊喜
一阵凉风吹过
列车徐徐的启动
车站很荒凉
候车室里有一个老头和一个小女孩
空气里混合着陈年的烟味
回去的车还有40多分钟
拉上夹克
挤出一股凉气
走进了这个小城
有一条黑黑的小溪穿过
小溪边上停着一辆很旧的Mercedes
还有一个吊在一根发霉的旧木棍上的秋千
几乎没有商业的小镇
近乎没有行人的街道
瑟瑟的秋风吹起斑驳的落叶
一个年迈的老头拖着一根很长很长的扫把
雪白的头发
一辆卡车开过
刮起一阵冷风
裹紧夹克
慢慢得走回车站
回去的车已经在等着
车上没有一个乘客
找了一高高的位子
坐下
睡着
醒来
很累
看着窗外迷雾中的秋天
到了终点站
随着零零星星的乘客
回到了居住的城市
从街的这一头走到了那一头
等着妻子的电话
从街的那一头回到了这一头
把手机握在手里
十分钟
二十分钟
三十分钟
四十分钟
......
给妻子打电话
妻子说刚托运完大行李
33公斤
手提11公斤
机场人员说too heavy
十分钟
二十分钟
三十分钟
......
妻子打电话过来
说出关了
说在免税区有人跟踪
赶紧出了关
回到宿舍
洗了洗
一头扎在床上
很累很累
头很疼
睡不着
数着绵羊
渐渐的睡去
朦朦胧胧中
电话响了
是妻子
飞机快起飞了
打完电话
一头扎在床上
很累很累
睡
睡
睡
......
睁开眼睛
天已黑
看着天花板
想起很多很多的事情
闭上眼睛
蜷起
思索着未来
起床
开始做晚饭
剩的面
剩的汤
剩的菜
用烤箱烤上面
清洗餐具
一盘面
一碗汤
一个菜
一个人的晚餐
本打算让妻子独立一次
所以让她买了单独的火车票
但还是改变主意送她到州的边境
我的学生证到哪个地方有效
让妻子在我肩上睡一会
妻子嫌我的肩膀太瘦
到了分别的时候
我下车
妻子挥手与我作别
我摇摇头
外面的空气很湿很冷
这是一个山谷里的小镇
看见检票员在检查上下车的人
示意司机可以开车了
那么一丝念头闪过
我想跳上车给妻子一个惊喜
一阵凉风吹过
列车徐徐的启动
车站很荒凉
候车室里有一个老头和一个小女孩
空气里混合着陈年的烟味
回去的车还有40多分钟
拉上夹克
挤出一股凉气
走进了这个小城
有一条黑黑的小溪穿过
小溪边上停着一辆很旧的Mercedes
还有一个吊在一根发霉的旧木棍上的秋千
几乎没有商业的小镇
近乎没有行人的街道
瑟瑟的秋风吹起斑驳的落叶
一个年迈的老头拖着一根很长很长的扫把
雪白的头发
一辆卡车开过
刮起一阵冷风
裹紧夹克
慢慢得走回车站
回去的车已经在等着
车上没有一个乘客
找了一高高的位子
坐下
睡着
醒来
很累
看着窗外迷雾中的秋天
到了终点站
随着零零星星的乘客
回到了居住的城市
从街的这一头走到了那一头
等着妻子的电话
从街的那一头回到了这一头
把手机握在手里
十分钟
二十分钟
三十分钟
四十分钟
......
给妻子打电话
妻子说刚托运完大行李
33公斤
手提11公斤
机场人员说too heavy
十分钟
二十分钟
三十分钟
......
妻子打电话过来
说出关了
说在免税区有人跟踪
赶紧出了关
回到宿舍
洗了洗
一头扎在床上
很累很累
头很疼
睡不着
数着绵羊
渐渐的睡去
朦朦胧胧中
电话响了
是妻子
飞机快起飞了
打完电话
一头扎在床上
很累很累
睡
睡
睡
......
睁开眼睛
天已黑
看着天花板
想起很多很多的事情
闭上眼睛
蜷起
思索着未来
起床
开始做晚饭
剩的面
剩的汤
剩的菜
用烤箱烤上面
清洗餐具
一盘面
一碗汤
一个菜
一个人的晚餐
Monday, October 15, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
[Media] The Past, Present, and Future of Food
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=19147
Whole Foods Market is the largest organic and natural retailer in the world. The co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey will offer a multimedia presentation of the past, present, and future of food. John Mackey will then join Michael Pollan in conversation, continuing in person the exchange of views the two have been conducting since the publication of Pollan's 2006 book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma."
Whole Foods Market is the largest organic and natural retailer in the world. The co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey will offer a multimedia presentation of the past, present, and future of food. John Mackey will then join Michael Pollan in conversation, continuing in person the exchange of views the two have been conducting since the publication of Pollan's 2006 book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma."
Thursday, October 4, 2007
[Math] reading Andrew Wiles
I'm interesting in mathematics for all the time.
As a child I was already fascinated by the simplicity and elegance of math. At that moment, however, I didn't have a great chance to continue my obsession. The education system and the environment was not set in a way right for a mathematician. I studied hard just for achieving good records for all the disciplines. I must go to a prestigious university.
If there is a chance to read great mathematicians, about their wisdom or story, I always become excited and imagine the great journey as a devoted mathematician. And this special love of mathematics did give me power and inspire me to tackle some hard problems that I met in computer science. I'm very proud of this kind of achievement.
An embarrassment I often have is that I have failed to be mathematician. Even worse I think mathematics is the real science and the greatest. It makes me think my current work is no longer valuable. With this kind of bad conscious, I missed lots of great moments that could happen on my life track. I missed these happy times.
As a child I was already fascinated by the simplicity and elegance of math. At that moment, however, I didn't have a great chance to continue my obsession. The education system and the environment was not set in a way right for a mathematician. I studied hard just for achieving good records for all the disciplines. I must go to a prestigious university.
If there is a chance to read great mathematicians, about their wisdom or story, I always become excited and imagine the great journey as a devoted mathematician. And this special love of mathematics did give me power and inspire me to tackle some hard problems that I met in computer science. I'm very proud of this kind of achievement.
An embarrassment I often have is that I have failed to be mathematician. Even worse I think mathematics is the real science and the greatest. It makes me think my current work is no longer valuable. With this kind of bad conscious, I missed lots of great moments that could happen on my life track. I missed these happy times.
[Math] Andrew Wiles
“You enter the first room of the mansion and it’s completely dark. You stumble around bumping into the furniture but gradually you learn where each piece of furniture is. Finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch, you turn it on, and suddenly it’s all illuminated. You can see exactly where you were. Then you move into the next room and spend another six months in the dark. So each of these breakthroughs, while sometimes they’re momentary, sometimes over a period of a day or two, they are the culmination of, and couldn’t exist without, the many months of stumbling around in the dark that precede them.”
‘This was my childhood passion. There’s nothing to replace that. I had this very rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life what had been my childhood dream. I know it’s a rare privilege, but if you can tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it’s more rewarding than anything imaginable. Having solved this problem there’s certainly a sense of loss, but at the same time there is this tremendous sense of freedom. I was so obsessed by this problem that for eight years I was thinking about it all the time – when I woke up in the morning to when I went to sleep at night. That’s a long time to think about one thing. That particular odyssey is over. My mind is at rest.’
"The problem with working on Fermat was that you could spend years getting nowhere. It’s fine to work on any problem, so long as it generates interesting mathematics along the way - even if you don’t solve it at the end of the day. The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself."
"Certainly one thing that I’ve learned is that it is important to pick a problem based on how much you care about it. However impenetrable it seems, if you don’t try it, then you can never do it. Always try the problem that matters most to you. I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream. I know it’s a rare privilege, but if one can really tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it’s more rewarding than anything I can imagine."
‘This was my childhood passion. There’s nothing to replace that. I had this very rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life what had been my childhood dream. I know it’s a rare privilege, but if you can tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it’s more rewarding than anything imaginable. Having solved this problem there’s certainly a sense of loss, but at the same time there is this tremendous sense of freedom. I was so obsessed by this problem that for eight years I was thinking about it all the time – when I woke up in the morning to when I went to sleep at night. That’s a long time to think about one thing. That particular odyssey is over. My mind is at rest.’
"The problem with working on Fermat was that you could spend years getting nowhere. It’s fine to work on any problem, so long as it generates interesting mathematics along the way - even if you don’t solve it at the end of the day. The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself."
"Certainly one thing that I’ve learned is that it is important to pick a problem based on how much you care about it. However impenetrable it seems, if you don’t try it, then you can never do it. Always try the problem that matters most to you. I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream. I know it’s a rare privilege, but if one can really tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it’s more rewarding than anything I can imagine."
[Link] web media
I found a good way to English. There are lots of excellent lectures available online.
Some of them can be found on prestigious university websites. Some of the them are from famous institutions or organizations.
Another important part of improving language is trying your best to write in that language or speak in that language. Or put it in a simple way: learning language by using.
My experience tell me the best time for learning a language is when I'm writing a paper.
Web media -- event streaming Princeton University
Web cast Berkeley
Some of them can be found on prestigious university websites. Some of the them are from famous institutions or organizations.
Another important part of improving language is trying your best to write in that language or speak in that language. Or put it in a simple way: learning language by using.
My experience tell me the best time for learning a language is when I'm writing a paper.
Web media -- event streaming Princeton University
Web cast Berkeley
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